Tuesday, July 29, 2014

First published in DelawareLiberal on 7/29/2014 by ProgressivePopulist

Ok, here’s a framework proposal for Israel/Palestine that at least
to me makes sense, though crude and not fleshed out with detail. Let the
experts do that.

First, the major premises:
. Israel will never agree to disarm unilaterally
. Thus, two co-equal states can’t fly
. Neither party will make peace voluntarily due to their dysfunction and pathology
. Most of their respective previous demands must be met
. The international community made this mess, it has to fix it
. World peace and security is jeopardized with the current state of conflict

So, here goes:
. An international intervention, first offered voluntarily and if
denied, forced on the two parties…probably with the UN as a peacekeeping
force but with major trusted groups from both sides providing the
reorganization: ie: the Arab League, UN and maybe NATO.

. Create a single, unitary Israeli/Palestinian State.

.
The New national government has co-equal Jewish/Arab legislative,
judicial and executive representation. The President and Prime Minister
alternative between Israeli and Palestinian (Arab and Jew) each election
cycle; equal seats in Knesset and courts, irrespective of ultimate
ethnic mix irrespective of population growths in each category.

.
The right of Palestinian return honored, using international funding
and housing starting with relocation of refugees and settlers and reuse
of settlements for the Palestinian refugees.

. Temporarily demilitarize Israel and disarm Palestinians.

.
The single state is given a new constitution protecting all the
citizenship and religious rights of both Palestinians, Israelis, Jews
and Muslims, likely within ’67 borders.

. Restore a national
single state military after stabilization and withdrawl of occupying
peacekeepers for future defense against outside attack or internal
insurrection.

. Similar co-equal governance of Jerusalem, but to include Christian representation.

. Equal protection of all religious/ethnic groups.

. Those on either side unwilling to abide by such a construct are offered immunity and relocation elsewhere in the world.

. The international community provides military and economic security until the country and economy is restarted.

Friday, July 25, 2014

I've been struggling with commentary on the current Gaza apocalypse
and finally discovered my truth about it. Taking sides is dumb and
totally misses both history and possible solutions.
This endless
terrifying conflict is no one's fault and everyone's fault. No one in
the sense that blame cannot be placed with one party. That would really
simplify solutions if that singular blame could be found. It belongs
to all of us: Palestinians, Israelis and the international community.

I
find the latest round of rallies for one side or another,including
right here in Delaware, utterly pointless and unproductive. Front
page of the DL on 07/25. They just exacerbate the tragedy and rage.

In
the blame sphere, let's start with the international community. The
1947 partitioning, taking the region out of the hands of colonial
Britain and putting it in the hands of the neophyte U.N. was stupid.
Stupidity driven by international guilt for permitting the holocaust and
abandoning European Jews. The U.N. then was simply unprepared to
properly consult with the existing Palestinian people in preparing for
the Partitioning, if it was to make sense at all. Unprepared to support
the relocation and settlement of the European and Middle Eastern Jews
relocating to the region, and protect the existing residents from
destabilization of their communities and provide appropriate
international funding to help create a peaceful transformation of the
area. The result? Jews had to fight their way in and in doing so
displaced 700,000 Arabs relegated to refugee camps still existing today
and housing 7 million Arabs in not so hospitable neighboring Arab
countries.

Now for blame within the Palestinian and Arab
communities. The remaining residents simply failed to secure or provide
the resources necessary to build a viable economy to sustain its people
to provide a hopeful future and create a government which could provide
adequate services. This led to generations of frustrated and angry
Palestinians who spent their energies building hostility and ultimately
many rounds of armed conflict with an emerging, supported and prospering
Israel. Their main focus became destroying Israel rather than
building a sustainable society. Palestinian support for right wing,
theocratic war makers making their policy undermined their society
building needs. And failing to recognize that their hostility only
energized the worldwide Jewish community to "never again" endure the
apocalypse brought upon them by Fascists and the Catholic Church.

As
for blame for Israel? Plenty too. a 47 year occupation, initially
justified right after the war of 1967, just was totally
counterproductive. It bred antagonism, hatred and distrust, not
security from attack. It created attack after endless attack. To add
insult to injury, the Zionist settlements, populated by people thinking
they had some kind of divine right to be squatters in Palestine. And
these squatters bred more generations of haters whose abuse and
resulting dysfunction created a continuing security threat, not a
peaceful neighbor. Israelis forgot their own history of abuse at the
hands of Europeans and their need to escape. They had a place to which
to escape at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians; the
Palestinians had no escape routes. These are really smart people. Why
didn't they get that?

So, how then can we expect two highly
dysfunctional societies to solve their own problem and make peace? One a
huge, prosperous, fear filled bully. The other a smaller, raging
victim with no leverage or options. I think the answer may be that this
is an impossible expectation. The solution lies in some form of
international peace making intervention.

Maybe the U.N. is not up
to the task. Perhaps some kind of task force of diplomats from the Arab
League and NATO, with U.N. Peacekeepers on the ground. What are your
ideas?

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on 7/23/2014 by ProgressivePopulist

So this is the so called U.S. justice system? Scalia gets forgiven
and excused for his (Clerks) typos in his dissent on the monumental
ObamaCare decision? But our President and the Pelosi congress (clerks)
don't? And 7 million people pay the price for a roundly acknowledged
typo in an opinion?
You constitutional scholars, show me the justice here? Thanks, America for again showing dishonesty and dysfunction.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on 7/13/2014 by ProgressivePopulist

The Hobby Lobby case gave us yet another reminder that corporations
are pushing for full recognition as people; in this case a person with a
particular religious belief. The Supremes seem totally hell bent on
actualizing this fiction which historically started with a very mistaken
decision based on an event decades ago in a area where I went to
college, Santa Clara, California.
So mistaken, some describe the
legend that the court clerk actually misconstrued or misrepresented the
finding in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific R.R. in writing the judges
opinion.

In typical U.S.A. fashion, rather than correcting the
mistake, as a nation we just keep doing it over and over. And given
that the current Supremes, at least the felonious five, are a wholly
owned subsidiary of corporate America, the fallacy just keeps getting
more intrenched.
So, let's compare the personhood of natural born people and corporate people clones.

Taxes-
Natural people get caught cheating on them or not paying and pay fines,
get their incomes garnished or sometimes go to the pen. Only 1 in 4
corporate people pay any taxes at all, some avoiding by relocating their
small headquarters to less taxing foreign countries. They also get
huge breaks from municipal/local taxes, especially if they relocated
from elsewhere that natural person property owners never get.

Cheating-If
natural people get caught, such as cheating in school, they are
expelled. Or, if they cheat family members or others, they are often
prosecuted by local law enforcement and courts and sent to jail.
Corporate people usually don't get caught and go on cheating like
overcharging or not honoring things like refunds or rebates and go on
forever until real people wise up and start using another company. If
they are caught, like bankers, they are fined maybe but can often go
back to the same old cheating ways.

Harming Neighbors-Real
people harming neighbors, like throwing garbage in their gutter or
flooding the neighborhood with the garden hose, can be sued, stopped by
health authorities or given restraining orders. Corporate people go on
for years polluting neighbors with toxins and it requires a monumental,
expensive legal effort to stop or restrain them. Often they are excused
because they "give people jobs".

Abuse Family Members-Real
people, if caught, can be tried, convicted and jailed for child or
parental abuse. Corporate people rarely are caught, again because they
"give people jobs" and therefore, any abuse of them is overlooked.
Abuse like underpaying, overworking, harassing and exploiting. The
abused generally just quit and go elsewhere. If they can find a job.
And of course, they can never tell their new employer about the abuse
because if they do, they won't be hired.

Neglecting Family-Real
people who neglect children or parents can be charged with crimes of
neglect and pay with jail terms or loss of guardianship/custody.
Corporate people can go on for whole careers neglecting employees with
no training, or ignoring their good performance, failure to reward with
raises or cut their benefits until the neglected employee just leaves
and is replaced by another person willing to endure such treatment until
giving up in disgust.

Endanger Safety-Real
people can be charged with things like reckless endangerment, convicted
and imprisoned or lose custody; or can be sued by those endangered.
Corporate people, rarely caught endangering with dangerous products,
work places or facilities, might be caused to pay a small fine or
forced to fix the broken/defective thing causing the endangerment. In
the U.S.A., there is hardly any enforcement of such safety violations
and it takes huge, expensive lawsuits to correct and compensate.

Powerful Citizens-Real
people are losing power as citizens with respect to their voting rights
and many have just given up participating in that realm. Corporate
people are as enthusiastic about electoral citizenship as are new
immigrant real people citizens. Corporations dominate elections with
cash and legislation with cash and lobbyists at a scale far exceeding
real people. They even build and own the machines we use to vote.

Be Liable-Real
people can be sued by other real people or corporate people, forced to
hire expensive lawyers and go to court to defend themselves against
civil complaints. Real people who work for corporations who actually
commit acts harming or damaging others are shielded from personal
liability and the corporation for whom they work, if they lose the case,
the corporation pays the legal costs for them; and because they were
doing the corporation policy, rarely lose their employment or salary and
benefits.

Influential Corporate Lawyers-Real
people generally don't have large, well connected law firms at their
disposal when in need of representation. They generally resort to the
storefront lawyer or if they can't afford that, court appointed lawyers
without country club memberships. Corporate people have access to so
called corporate lawyers, often in the largest, oldest and most
connected (with judges) firms with multiple names and partners. This is
a whole class of law and lawyers who populate the prestige social clubs
in town. Not so much for ordinary real people consumers. So you can
pretty well guess how these cases turn out.

So, the moral
of this story is that corporations are not only people, they are highly
privileged persons with far more rights, protections, exemptions and
personal discretion than natural people. That's why they are permitted
much more influence with our government than natural people as we have
seen recently both with our courts and legislative bodies.

Get
used to it. No change in sight anytime soon. Remember the push back in
the 70's and 80's for good "Corporate Citizenship" ? Maybe it is time
to revive that concept with our regulatory bodies, given that then
corporations were avoiding being judged for good citizenship. Now they
are fully embracing the concept of citizenship, be it good or bad. They
claim their only responsibility as people and citizens is to make money
for the bottom line. Nothing else.

Looks like the question is pretty thoroughly answered. Corporations surely are persons; very powerful citizens. Overpowering.

Any other examples out there of corporate persons vs. natural persons? I'd love to see them.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

First published in DelawareLiberal by ProgressivePopulist on 7/1/2014300 more to Iraq, for a total of 800. But we're
told, no boots on the ground. Just security forces for the 500 already
there, mostly in the Taj Majal U.S. Embassy, just a few in foward
positions as "advisors". Sound familiar? It does for those of us who
survived the 60's and 70's.

So, if these brave souls are not boots
on the ground, are they disarmed? Are they all boots but no arms?
give me a break. Hopefully, for their own good they're armed to the
teeth. Because ISIS, reportedly about 10,000 strong scattered between
Syria and Iraq, is armed to the hilt. By whom you ask? Reportedly by
our petro-allies the Saudi's and the families that run their neighboring
oil soaked petro-nations. You know, the good folks we still depend on
to power our carbon-saturated nation.

Now for the creepy part.
This hand full of advisors are going to fix in a few weeks or months
what thousands of our uniformed people didn't get right or didn't get
done in several years before we hauled out of there, evicted as it were
by those we brung to the table? At this scale, looks like just a few
loose ends to tie up. But on closer examination, there's a load more to
fix than a few loose ends with the Iraqi military and policing forces.
Too many blanks to fill in here to make me feel comfortable that this
is just a non-war making advisory mission.

Rumors too about
drones, not to mention carriers and warships bobbing on the waves
nearby, loaded with missiles and bomb tonnage. And megabucks being
allocated for "moderate" anti-government forces in Syria. So this is
just psychological warfare? Give me a break. This is lock and load
time for both Syria and Iraq.

And tell me again how we can with
any confidence identify the moderates from the fanatics in Syria? The
right wing blogsphere is loaded with stories about our having trained
Syrian opposition fighters in Jordon with a couple of other allies, only
to have some of them defect to ISIS. Similar unsubstantiated reports
have emerged in TruthDig and RT.com. Juan Cole, a respected Michigan
middle east scholar similarly reports such training by our CIA starting
in 2012, citing Jordan government sources.

But even if these
reports are not true, what guarantees against the defection of the
Syrian moderates we fund to the ISIS crazies? How good is our
historical track record in that sophisticated understanding of middle
eastern culture and political dynamics? Remember how we funded Al Qaeda
as our proxies vs. the Soviets in Afghanistan? Ok, enough of the
creepy part.

Now the mission part. What exactly are we to
achieve? In Syria, a new regime as reliable as the one we crafted in
Iraq? Really? In Iraq, a restoration of a unity government as strong
as the totalitarian regime it took, under tyrant Sadaam to hold things
together? Wasn't there a lesson in there somewhere ?

About Me

Moved to Wilmington, Delaware in mid-2013. Resided in Houston, Texas for 45 years. A widower, married Julie Jackson in 2007. Retired as a hospital marketing consultant in 2001.Have been a Democratic Party political activist for most of my adult life, organizing and mobilizing for the Party and its candidates. Consider myself a progressive populist. Early career included running communications for 35 campaigns. Have formed and led committees dealing with voter mobilization and precinct organizing, counter voter suppression and strategy.Co-founded the Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party. Have served on the Texas Democratic Party Platform Committee numerous times. Also an active organizer for the anti-war movement since Vietnam and was active in the civil rights movement.